Internationalisation Awards of the President of the Republic of Finland to Mobile Monday
Mrs Tarja Halonen, President of the Republic of Finland;
Mr Vesa Paananen, Founder of Mobile Monday; Mr Jari Tammisto, CEO Mobile Monday Oy
The award ceremony on the 14th February was the 40th in the history of the prize. The ceremony also marked the second time in the history of the Internationalisation Awards that a community has won the award. The objective of the Internationalisation Awards, which are coordinated by Finpro, is to help businesses to operate in an international environment and to boost their ability to develop and adopt new operating models.
“Finpro’s core mission is to inject the Finnish innovation environment with know-how and trends from the global marketplace. Another key goal is to promote the growth and internationalisation of Finnish businesses. The Internationalisation Award is our way to give recognition to enterprises that have already successfully demonstrated their ability to operate on the international market. These enterprises also act as points of reference and set a great example to others,” says Jorma Turunen, Managing Director of Finpro. The 2007 awards ceremony doubles as a celebration of the 40-year history of the prize. The Export Award of the President of the Republic of Finland, which preceded the Internationalisation Award, was founded in 1967. Mobile Monday efficiently reaches mobile professionals around the world. “We plan to host just over 700 Mobile Monday events in 2008 in 70 different cities around the world, and we expect to see more than 90,000 participants. These figures make Mobile Monday the world’s leading event organiser in the mobile technology industry,” explains Jari Tammisto, CEO of Mobile Monday. Mobile Monday is a public online community which aims to bring together developers, decision-makers, researchers and funding agencies from the mobile industry through monthly events, international conventions, the online community and newsletters. The objectives are, amongst other things, to promote innovation within the mobile industry, to encourage networking amongst different organisations and to communicate industry trends, research findings and future projections. The organisation behind Mobile Monday is a Finnish NPO called Mobile Monday Oy, which coordinates the global community with the help of more than 300 volunteers.
(Text Finpro, photo Tommi Tuomi)
Buzzd to honors at Barcelona MobileMonday Awards
Buzzd from New York, a provider of local real-time search information for bars, clubs and restaurants on the mobile device, cleaned the table by winning jury, audience and community awards under the early stage category at the Mobile Monday Peer Awards in Barcelona. 
In the Emerging Community category, Taptu a search and sharing engine from London won the award with Funambol, an open source email and messaging company, while local favorite Kimia, a rich media content provider, clinched the audience choice. “Winning these awards amongst the best and brightest companies across the world exemplifies the demand for location-sensitive services like buzzd,” said Buzzd CEO and co-founder Nihal Mehta. The 2008 Mobile Monday Peer Awards recognized 27 companies from 18 countries at its annual awards event held at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. "Mobile Monday’s ultra global and super local model has once again illuminated some of the world’s most innovative rising mobile companies", said Jari Tammisto, CEO of Mobile Monday Oy. "The Mobile Monday chapter nominees for the Barcelona Peer Awards demonstrated impressive vision. These fresh ideas are much needed in our industry and we are thrilled to showcase them in Mobile Monday community". Mr. Pekka Ala-Pietila, former president at Nokia Corporation and currently chief executive officer of Blyk Corporation delivered the keynote address to over 500 delegates keen for mobile’s cutting edge offerings submitted by Early-Stage and Emerging Start-Up categories judged in a fast pitch format.
Three awards in each category: jury, audience, and community were judged by an expert jury including representatives from Telefónica R&D, the Mobile Marketing Assoc., Vodafone Group, Google, Nexit Ventures, eXtract, the Mobile Monday global chapter founders and audience SMS voting.
This year's winners at the Mobile Monday Peer Awards Barcelona will be invited to participate in the Mobile Monday Global Summit in conjunction with the World Congress on IT (WCIT) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 18-22, 2008.
(Timo Poropudas)
Introducing Peer Award Nominees and Italian Start-ups
Mobile Monday has announced its Peer Award nominees. 25 chapters from around the world have chosen companies that have demonstrated exceptionally innovative mobile technologies, products, services and concepts. The event will be held at Espacio Movistar. Luis Jorge Romero, Director of Standards and Innovation in Telefónica España, will be a keynote speaker together with Pekka Ala-Pietilä, CEO and Co-Founder, Blyk.
Mobile Monday Italy wants to thank wholeheartedly all the innovative Italian start-up companies that managed to participate to the Peer Award nominations with such a short notice!
MoMo Italy will be represented in Barcelona by these companies:
Nanology is a brand of Subliminal Studio. Nanology is at the forefront of digital interactive entertainment. It creates innovative premium formats for mobile, IPTV, Web and broadcast. Subliminal Studio are currently looking for capital to commercialize and further develop the projects they have created. The 3 major works specifically thought for mobile, which have been taking shape in the last year are: THE PERFECT WORLD, an interactive futuristic Matrix-style movie/videogame suitable for Mobile, IPTV, DTT or DVBH; THE INLUDO, a Gotham City-like noir where users choose an avatar and access subsequent video pills depending on the choices they make; THE BEATZ, an animated music reality show for mobile with premium voting and downloads (already produced and displayed in Italy and Switzerland and ready for distribution). 
Waymedia's youPeople is an innovative service, currently in beta test phase in a number of selected locations, which enables users to send free SMS directly from their mobile phone. Messages are first composed on the user's handset and then transferred via Bluetooth to the youPeople access point which is usually located in some social venue like a pub or a club. The access point then forwards messages to Waymedia's gateway which takes care of SMS delivering. There is absolutely no cost for both service users and owners of the venues, since the wireless communication technology used (Bluetooth) is completely free of charge, and since the SMS delivery costs are covered by advertising revenues.
All candidates were fascinating. This is why MoMo Italy would like to proudly present to our international public a significant line-up of great start-up projects:
ClickOVA is an application for mobile phones. It allows users to share and sync their mobile life. Using ClickOVA, people can upload to a personal web space, all the pictures, videos and contacts stored on their mobile phone. Once the software is installed, users do not have to do anything; the uploads are made automatically. Users can download the application directly from their phone at the address http://m.clickova.com or by simply entering their phone number in the designated area of the website www.clickova.com. ClickOVA is easy to use and brings a convenient solution to manage, share, and print mobile media content.
The spin-off from Quinary, Videofy, provides the technology and infrastructure to develop and publish dynamic, interactive video services to the web and to mobile. Videofy products bring the web development paradigm - where a page is dynamically formatted and delivered to the user by assembling various items from different sources - to video applications. The Videofy offering includes: A software engine for video processing, supporting dynamic generation of mobile and web video from local and remote sources; a hosted platform for running video services; a portfolio of white label, pre-built mobile video services that can be customized by enterprise customers to run on our hosted platform or in-house.
Vipera (www.vipera.com) is a new mobile social network which sets out to change lives to people in the developing world, where access to connected PCs is limited. Our vision is simply "to create the first interactive mobile media community, designed for mobile, inspired by events, generated by opinions". A unique combination of micro-blogging/publishing and instant messaging features with an edgy editorial animation, Vipera aims to build "one place" to make interesting facts and passionate opinions on hot topics reach the world. Try it out at http://www.vipera.com. - Founded in 2005, Vipera is a privately held company incorporated in Delaware, USA, with offices in Zurich, Switzerland, in Milan, Italy and an offshore technical development center in Bangalore, India.
In addition to Waymedia's youPeople and Nanology by Subliminal from Italy, to Barcelona will travel from around the world these start-ups that have demonstrated exceptionally innovative mobile technologies, products, services and concepts:
Amsterdam - Movels
Bangalore - Mobisy
Barcelona - skuair
Berlin - ViiF
Boston - SnapMyLife
Brussels - Mobixx
Chennai - Mobile-worx
Dusseldorf - Cellity
Helsinki - Fromdistance
Istanbul - Mobinex
London - The 3G Dating Agency
London - Taptu
Madrid - Kimia
Mumbai - Ziva Technologies
Munich - hiClip
New York - BuzzD
Oslo - Adactus
Paris - WebWag
Shanghai - DuoGuo
Silicon Valley - Funambol
Singapore - mBit.tv
St. Petersburg - 4Mobi.TV
Stockholm - Momail
Taipei - Toro
Each chapter has only a couple of minutes' "elevator pitch" time to present themselves - a thrilling spectacle!
This year’s winners at the Mobile Monday Peer Awards Barcelona will also be invited to participate in the Innovation Pad activities at the Mobile Monday Global Summit in conjunction with the World Congress on IT in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 18-22, 2008.
The Mobile Monday Peer Awards Barcelona will be held at Espacio Movistar. Luis Jorge Romero, Director of Standards and Innovation in Telefonica Espana, will be a keynote speaker together with Pekka Ala-Pietilä, CEO and Co-Founder, Blyk (and one of the former CEOs of Nokia). Mr. Romero will speak about the future of the mobile market and his experience driving innovation in Telefonica Espana, whose Open Innovation strategy encourages innovation and value creation by partnering with new start-ups.
Welcome to join us and see the breath-taking competition!
